User talk:RandomDSdevel/Archive 8
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Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Recent changes
- The visual editor can generate wikicode with image options in your language. Examples of image options are "thumb" or "left". You can ask to change to options in your language in Phabricator. [1][2]
- Wiktionaries and Wikisources can now use the visual editor. It is an opt-in beta feature. It still needs development to work better with these projects. [3][4]
- ORES is using new models. Tools that use ORES' predictions can behave strangely. ORES also has a new API. [5]
- The visual editor now supports classical Greek characters. [6]
Problems
- There was a bug when you used keyboard arrows in templates in the visual editor. This has now been fixed. [7]
Changes this week
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 12 April. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 13 April. It will be on all wikis from 14 April (calendar).
- The wikipedia.org portal will get many small bug fixes and improvements. Most will be for the search box and suggested results that were added in March. [8]
Meetings
You can join the next meeting with the VisualEditor team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on 12 April at 19:00 (UTC). See how to join.
You can join the next meeting with the Architecture committee. The topics this week are improving transclusion of templates for Parsoid and balanced templates. The meeting will be on 13 April at 21:00 (UTC). See how to join.
Future changes
- Wikimedia has a new backup data center in Dallas. Because of planned work on this, you will be able to read but not edit the wikis for a short period of time on both 19 April and 21 April. This will start at 14:00 UTC and last for 15 to 30 minutes. [9]
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20:44, 11 April 2016 (UTC)
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Recent changes
- You can filter Special:Log in more detail. You can filter different imports and new users. [10][11]
- You can use Telnet to read Wikimedia wikis. [12]
- MediaWiki wikis can handle bigger file uploads. The new limit is 4 GB. [13]
Changes this week
- Wikimedia has a new backup data center in Dallas. Because of planned work on this, you will be able to read but not edit the wikis for a short period of time on both 19 April and 21 April. This will start at 14:00 UTC and last for 15 to 30 minutes. [14]
- There is no new Mediawiki version this week. This is because of the data center test.
Meetings
You can join the next meeting with the VisualEditor team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on April 19 at 19:00 (UTC). See how to join.
You can join the next meeting with the Architecture committee. The topic this week is shadow namespaces. The meeting will be on 20 April at 21:30 (UTC). See how to join.
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20:40, 18 April 2016 (UTC)
WikiProject X Newsletter • Issue 8

This month:
In the last issue of the WikiProject X Newsletter, I discussed the upcoming Wikipedia Requests system: a central database for outstanding work on Wikipedia. I am pleased to announce Wikipedia Requests is live! Its purpose is to supplement automatically generated lists, such as those from SuggestBot, Reports bot, or Wikidata. It is currently being demonstrated on WikiProject Occupational Safety and Health (which I work on as part of my NIOSH duties) and WikiProject Women scientists.
Adding a request is as simple as filling out a form. Just go to the Add form to add your request. Adding sources will help ensure that your request is fulfilled more quickly. And when a request is fulfilled, simply click "mark as complete" and it will be removed from all the lists it's on. All at the click of a button! (If anyone is concerned, all actions are logged.)
With this new service is a template to transclude these requests: {{Wikipedia Requests}}. It's simple to use: add the template to a page, specifying article=
, category=
, or wikiproject=
, and the list will be transcluded. For example, for requests having to do with all living people, just do {{Wikipedia Requests|category=Living people}}
. Use these lists on WikiProjects but also for edit-a-thons where you want a convenient list of things to do on hand. Give it a shot!
The value of Wikipedia Requests comes from being a centralized database. The long work to migrating individual lists into this combined list is slowly underway. As of writing, we have 883 open tasks logged in Wikipedia Requests. We need your help building this list.
If you know of a list of missing articles, or of outstanding tasks for existing articles, that you would like to migrate to this new system, head on over to Wikipedia:Wikipedia Requests#Transition project and help out. Doing this will help put your list in front of more eyes—more than just your own WikiProject.
WikiProject X maintains a database that associates article talk pages (and draft talk pages) with WikiProjects. This database powers many of the reports that Reports bot generates. However, until very recently, this database was not made available to others who might find its data useful. It's only common sense to open up the database and let others build tools with it.
And indeed: Citation Hunt, the game to add citations to Wikipedia, now lets you filter by WikiProject, using the data from our database.
Are you a tool developer interested in using this? Here are some details: the database resides on Tool Labs with the name s52475__wpx_p
. The table that associates WikiProjects with articles and drafts is called projectindex
. Pages are stored by talk page title but in the future this should change. Have fun!
- The work on the CollaborationKit extension continues. The extension will initially focus on reducing template and Lua bloat on WikiProjects (especially our WPX UI demonstration projects), and will from there create custom interfaces for creating and maintaining WikiProjects.
- The WikiCite meeting will be in Berlin in May. The goal of the meeting is to figure out how to build a bibliographic database for use on the Wikimedia projects. This fits in quite nicely with WikiProject X's work: we want to make it easier for people to find things to work on, and with a powerful, open bibliographic database, we can build recommendations for sources. This feature was requested by the Wikipedia Library back in September, and this meeting is a major next step. We look forward to seeing what comes out of this meeting.
Until next time,
Harej (talk) 01:29, 20 April 2016 (UTC)
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Problems
- Wikimedia tested a new data center last week. This meant that the wikis could be read but not edited for 45 minutes on April 19 and for 20 minutes on April 21. [15]
- When the data center was tested, new edits were not shown in the recent changes log for 20 minutes. They are in the logs now. You can read more about how to find the edits.
- Unread notifications were sometimes counted incorrectly. This has now been fixed. [16]
Changes this week
- Wikimedia Commons will have better access to Wikidata. They can use data from any page on Wikidata on any page on Commons. This will happen on April 26. [17]
- It will be easier to choose if you want to watch files you have uploaded with the upload wizard. [18]
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from April 26. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from April 27. It will be on all wikis from April 28 (calendar).
Meetings
You can join the next meeting with the VisualEditor team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on April 26 19:00 (UTC). See how to join.
Future changes
- The "Save page" button when you edit will be called "Publish" instead. This is to help new editors understand what it does. It already works like this on some wikis. [19]
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21:02, 25 April 2016 (UTC)
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Recent changes
- The visual editor now works when you use Internet Explorer 9. [20]
Problems
- There was a security problem with the MobileFrontend extension. It showed information that had been oversighted. This has now been fixed. [21]
Changes this week
- You can now see which notifications are available on a wiki on Special:DisplayNotificationsConfiguration. [22]
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from May 3. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from May 4. It will be on all wikis from May 5 (calendar).
Meetings
You can join the next meeting with the Architecture committee. The topic this week is "PSR-6 Cache interface in Mediawiki core". The meeting will be on May 4 at 21:00 (UTC). See how to join.
Future changes
- Pages could be added to new users' watchlists by default when they edit them. New users could also by default get email notifications when pages they watch are edited. This is discussed on Meta. [23]
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20:09, 2 May 2016 (UTC)
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Recent changes
- Wikiversities now have better access to Wikidata. They can use data from any page on Wikidata on any page on Wikiversity. This happened on May 3. [24]
- You can use Wikipedia GapFinder to find missing articles between languages. [25]
- Users are invited to try Cross-wiki Notifications on all wikis. This is the last test session before the release by default, scheduled for May 12th at 23:00 UTC. [26][27]
- You can use keyboard shortcuts to open the visual editor (meta+V) or the wikitext editor (meta+E) (on certain wikis, even if you have chosen a favorite editor). [28]
- Uploading files bigger than 100 megabytes on Wikimedia Commons required to opt-in in your preferences. This is not necessary anymore. [29]
- The UploadsLink extension is now available on Wikimedia Commons. [30]
- Deleting a translation unit page didn't remove the corresponding content from the translation page. This is now solved. [31]
- Translation suggestions based on Apertium are now available on Mediawiki.org. [32]
Problems
- MediaWiki 1.27.0-wmf.23 has been rolled back from Wikimedia wikis, due to a performance issue. [33]
Changes this week
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from May 10. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from May 11. It will be on all wikis from May 12 (calendar).
Meetings
You can join the next meeting with the VisualEditor team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on May 10 at 19:00 (UTC). See how to join.
You can join the next meeting with the Architecture committee. The topics this week are Overhaul Interwiki map, unify with Sites and WikiMap. The meeting will be on May 11 at 21:00 (UTC). See how to join.
- 2017 European hackathon will happen on May 19 - 21, in Vienna (Austria).
Future changes
- Today, in categories, a page titled "11" comes before "2". We plan to reorder that: "2" will come before "11". Please tell the developers if the change will cause problems. [34]
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23:22, 9 May 2016 (UTC)
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Recent changes
- Some image thumbnails now load faster on mobile. They also take up less bandwidth. [35]
Problems
- Last week's MediaWiki version was late on some wikis. [36]
Changes this week
- Special:Notifications will have "mark as read" buttons for each day. The non-JavaScript version will get it this week. A JavaScript version will come later. [37]
- Wikis can now locally decide what wikitext they want the signature button to produce. [38]
- A one-time welcome message for users will now be shown in the wikitext editor. This will include existing users. [39]
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from May 17. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from May 18. It will be on all wikis from May 19 (calendar).
Meetings
You can join the next meeting with the Architecture committee. The topics this week are "Requirements for change propagation". The meeting will be on May 18 at 21:00 (UTC). See how to join.
Future changes
- Using self-closing tags like
<div/>
and<span/>
to mean<div></div>
and<span></span>
will not work in the future. Templates and pages that use these tags should be fixed. When Phabricator ticket T134423 is fixed these tags will parse as<div>
and<span>
instead. This is normal in HTML5. [40]
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16:01, 16 May 2016 (UTC)
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Recent changes
- You now see a warning message on pages that try to use {{DISPLAYTITLE}} but it doesn't work because it doesn't match the page's actual title. [41]
Problems
- Commons had problems with server lag. This meant that it took longer time for files to turn up in categories. [42]
Changes this week
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 24 May. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 25 May. It will be on all wikis from 26 May (calendar).
Meetings
You can join the next meeting with the VisualEditor team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on May 24 at 19:00 (UTC). See how to join.
Future changes
All HTTP access to Wikimedia sites and APIs will stop working. Some bots still use HTTP. They will need to use HTTPS instead. This will happen on June 12. [43]
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18:40, 23 May 2016 (UTC)
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Recent changes
There is now a standard way to get the target of a redirect page from a Lua module. [44]
Problems
- A new way to handle rollback was introduced. It broke some tools and scripts and was reverted. This will be re-planned after review. [45][46]
- CentralNotice didn't work in some older browsers. This has now been fixed. [47]
Changes this week
- When you edit a file or category page with the visual editor the rest of the page will be shown in its normal place. [48]
- The Translate extension will get an edit summary field. [49]
- A change to the
<charinsert>
feature could break some user scripts. Contact Bawolff if the "click to insert special characters" links in the edit window break on your wiki. [50][51] - Elasticsearch will be upgraded on Wikimedia wikis this week. This should not affect you, but if you have problems with the search function this is probably the reason. [52]
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 31 May. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 1 June. It will be on all wikis from 2 June (calendar).
Meetings
You can join the next meeting with the VisualEditor team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on 31 May at 19:00 (UTC). See how to join.
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16:19, 30 May 2016 (UTC)
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Recent changes
Changes this week
- The history page can tell you if a page on your watchlist was updated since you last visited it. This now works the same way in Vector as in other skins. The change broke local designs on some wikis. This will be fixed this week. [55]
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 7 June. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 8 June. It will be on all wikis from 9 June (calendar).
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20:51, 6 June 2016 (UTC)